{"id":555,"date":"2010-01-13T21:58:29","date_gmt":"2010-01-14T02:58:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/?p=555"},"modified":"2010-07-08T11:56:29","modified_gmt":"2010-07-08T16:56:29","slug":"splash-screens-are-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/2010\/01\/13\/splash-screens-are-evil\/","title":{"rendered":"Splash Screens Are Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Splash screens are evil. While branding is important, the proper place for it is in the iconography, optional &#8220;About&#8221; or &#8220;Info&#8221; screens, and App Store profiles. The most common interaction pattern with iPhone applications is to launch them frequently, close them quickly, and treat them as part of a set of tools that interact to comprise a single user experience. <strong>Splash screens break the perception of seamlessness<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/developer.apple.com\/iphone\/library\/documentation\/UserExperience\/Conceptual\/MobileHIG\/Introduction\/Introduction.html\">The HIG<\/a> offers a very useful suggestion for managing launch states, which may be quite slow, depending on the needs of your application. The suggestion is to provide a PNG image file in your application bundle that acts as a visual stand-in for the initial screen of your application. For example, if the main screen for your application is a table full of data, provide an image of a table without data to act as a stand-in. When your data is ready to be displayed, the image will be flushed from the screen, and the user experience will feel more responsive.<\/p>\n<p>In this book, we will explore extensions of this, including a pattern for loading application state lazily\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211;Toby Boudreaux, <cite><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0596155468?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=vincgabl-20&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=0596155468\">iPhone User Experience<\/a><\/cite>, page 15; emphasis mine.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve <em>always<\/em> hated splash screens, from the first time I turned on a computer. They get in the way of what I want to do. I want to write, or draw, or play &#8212; but if I launch Word, or Photoshop, or any game, I have to sit through a splash screen before I can get to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Branding a splashscreen is putting your name on <em>a purely negative experience<\/em><\/strong>. Nobody wants to wait for their computer. Splashscreens, by definition, force you to wait. It&#8217;s hard for me to imagine why anyone wants to associate their brand with a computer not doing what customers want.<\/p>\n<h3>iPhone 4 Update<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/db.tidbits.com\/article\/11378\">Fast App Switching<\/a>, introduced in iOS 4, makes  splash screens a <em>much worse<\/em> idea. They won&#8217;t consistently display, because sometimes the app will really be resuming, not starting for the first time, when the user &#8220;launches&#8221; it. Forcing a splash-screen to appear on a resume as well means breaking the &#8220;multitasking&#8221; experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Splash screens are evil. While branding is important, the proper place for it is in the iconography, optional &#8220;About&#8221; or &#8220;Info&#8221; screens, and App Store profiles. The most common interaction pattern with iPhone applications is to launch them frequently, close them quickly, and treat them as part of a set of tools that interact to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,203,4,8],"tags":[386,555],"class_list":["post-555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","category-iphone","category-programming","category-usability","tag-branding","tag-splashs-screen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vgable.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}